


romantic stories

by brendonurie



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Infidelity, M/M, POV First Person, listen! i know... but just read it. throam is in first person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 01:25:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4121224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brendonurie/pseuds/brendonurie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>i am not ready</p>
            </blockquote>





	romantic stories

i.  
I am pacing. Not-- I mean, not like I usually do. It’s a little more focused. I move a little quicker, the electricity in my spine ushering me across the room and back again. My fingers flex and the air heats up around them. An envelope gives me a thousand tiny paper cuts even though it’s on the kitchen counter and not in my dry, calloused hands. I am not ready.

I jump violently at the vibrations from my phone. Loud, loud, loud-- Not that it matters. I couldn’t hear the song in my head anymore anyway.

I pick it up, “dank eyes” blinks out at me followed by a plethora of smiley faces. I answer.

“Baby, my love, the moon to my s--”  
“Stop. What?”  
“Where are you?”  
“Where am I when I’m not with you?”  
“Good point. Pick you up in an hour?”  
“I don’t think so. Not tonight.”  
“Come on, baby boy.”  
“Bye, Dan.”

A faint beep and he is gone. I don’t miss him.

\---

“Where are we going?”  
“You’ll see!”  
“Come on. Give me a hint.”  
“Let’s go, we’re going to miss the train.”

Our hands brush on the way out the door, and it’s fine. It’s fine. I’m taking him on a date but he doesn’t know it and that’s fine. Just fine.

“Ryan, is it, like, a fun place?”  
“Eh.”  
“So it’s boring?”  
“What? No. Shut up.”

He pinches my side, and I’m biting back the urge to kiss him.

When we get to the stop, we have just missed the last train and are forced to wait for the next one. The sky is gray today, which is only fair, because I’ve stolen away the sun.

“I think I just felt a raindrop.”  
“We’ll be fine.”  
“I told you we should have brought an umbrella.”  
“We will be fine.”

I figure if I keep saying it, it will be true.

\---

I’m tired now because I’m out of shape because I don’t do shit. I sit down and the chair, even, seems to know that the universe is in disarray. There’s static in the air, and I don’t have to be shocked to feel it. It prickles every hair on my body and good God, I am still not ready.

I pick up the envelope again, gingerly, so as not to make it vanish back into the depths of my wildest dreams, where I know it came from. Its contents are still slightly sticking out, where I left them, too startled to even really see them.

I pull the card-stock out of the envelope and the glittering gold letters flash at me. I could be cliche and pretend that the gold is there to mock me, but I think the precious metal has its heart in it, at least tonight. Pretty green laurels decorate the edges of the card and I am looking everywhere, trying not to have to read the words. I already know what it is, I think I know what it says, but I am not ready. I won’t be, for a long time, I don’t think.

\---

We have been on the train for twenty minutes now, and I’m not looking at the raindrops rolling down the window, and I’m not looking at the rolling hills of Los Angeles but I’m looking at the boy next to me. I’m watching him and I’m watching the way his leg shakes with the movement of the train. I’m looking at the stars I squeeze into my eyes when he presses into me when we go around a bend. I’m looking at his breath and tasting it too, but only in my wildest dreams.

“Are you okay?”  
“Never better.”

I squint my eyes and smile at him, and he eats it up. I can’t really blame him.

The train goes around another bend, and I am blinding myself looking at the stars.

\---

I’m not ready for this and I knew it. I was right; it’s a save-the-date. April 27th. My teeth chatter like it’s the ice age. I’m staring at it so intensely for so long, that I almost miss the tiny note at the bottom. It’s different handwriting than the quick cursive on the envelope. It’s all capital letters, each one as important as the one before it.

“Please come. I need to see you.”

No one’s signed their name to the little post-script, but Brendon always was too modest to take credit.

 

ii.  
I’m not ready, but I am here. I’m here in Malibu and I wish I wasn’t. I can hear every gust of wind rustling every blade of grass and it is deafening, it’s deafening, and he’s helping with that. I can hear the blood rushing through his veins and I haven’t even seen him yet. I’m moving forward and I’m not ready but now I have to be, I’m here and he’s here, and I have to be ready.

I turn a corner, hands in my pockets because I didn’t bring a gift. My eyes are cast down because I know that Pete will be here and that’s another occasion all it’s own. I smell sweet wine and sweeter champagne and my throat aches.

I round the corner, and because this is not a game, because this is not a dream, because this is not a storybook, we do not collide. He is not there, in the same instance as me, in the same moment. He is, however, ten feet away, fixing his tie in the reflection of a window.

He is wearing his suit on his wedding day and I am here, mere feet away, and I was never ready for this.

\---

We are smashed in a bunk on a bus hurtling down the highway and this, this I was born to do. We are silent, and we know our rhythms; we have fine-tuned ourselves to fit into one another better, we will never stop growing closer. Our bodies meld together through our clothes because nothing stops us, nothing can get in our way.

The bus hits a bump in the road, jolting us, tossing us both out of the bunk and onto the floor. Our hands find each other in the dark, electricity passes through us that says, “I’m alright,” and we laugh. We laugh loudly and it still doesn’t wake anyone and we fall asleep on the floor.

\---

He looks at me, clears his throat, and approaches me. I can feel my sunglasses slipping down my nose but I can’t move, I’m stuck because I wasn’t ready but I showed up anyway. I can’t read his face, even when he’s less than a foot away.

“You made it.”  
“Wouldn’t miss it.”  
“Let’s catch up.”

He tugs at my elbow and if I was ever unclear as to why I was invited today, I wasn’t anymore. I follow him back to the little studio on the property, cleared out for the groom’s use only. I’m suddenly tired, suddenly remembering things that I thought I forced myself to forget and I can hear him, I can hear his heart pumping. I’ve always been able to, and he never gets away with lying to me.

\---

I wake up in the morning to his fingernails in my side. We’re still on the floor, curled up into each other as best we can be in the narrow space. He’s looking up at me, his head resting on my arm. I smile down at him and at that moment someone rips back their bunk curtain and we are standing, we are upright and rigid. Not that it isn’t allowed, or that we had to be quiet, but we are a little shy. Of course we are, the two of us. It couldn’t be any other way.

No one speaks and we all move to eat what little food we have on the bus. It’s quiet and warm; sunlight filters through the blinds and makes him glow, just a little more than he usually does.

\---

He is pressed against me, and I want to say something about wrinkles in his suit but I don’t because I didn’t think I’d want to talk and so I am not ready, I never am. I am against the wall and I note how unlike him this is but I don’t mind because I can still hear his cells multiplying, his muscles contracting, and so I know it is him. His hands are warm at my sides, and my body runs cold.

He lunges, kisses me.

I try and kiss back, and he goes for it. I want to be active, be a part of it. I move to put my hands in his hair and he tears away from me.

“Don’t--”

He doesn’t bother finishing, but I get it. He keeps kissing me, and I keep kissing back, making a minimal effort. I can feel him, hard and hot against my leg but he’s not making any move to do anything about it, so I don’t either.

We are alone in this room and we fill it with guilty little smacks of our lips. We were alone in the whole world, once, and we tried to fill it with sound but we couldn’t do it. But, God, did we try. The sun peaks in the sky outside and we are acutely aware; we know that as the sun begins its descent so do we, finally, finally, for the last time. We are so tired, the warm spring air pressing down on us and tickling our eyelids. But we keep going, if only for a minute more.

He pulls away. Words come.

“Is that why you invited me?”  
“I wanted you to be here, but I wanted to see you, too.”  
“Usually people see with their eyes.”

He ignores me, finally able to put me away in a drawer, a closet, never to be pulled out again.

“This is the last. She’s everything to me. I just wanted closure. For both of us.”

I nod, the vertebrae of my neck creaking with surrender. I know that he means what he says and I accept it. I could not change his mind if I wanted to. I straighten out my clothes and leave the room.

 

As I get further and further from the property, I realize that I was always ready to see him, but I was never ready to leave.

**Author's Note:**

> based on a misheard lyric in far too young to die:
> 
> well I never really thought that you'd come tonight  
> while the crown hangs heavy on either side  
> give me one last kiss while we're far too young to die  
> far too young to die
> 
> i misheard it as "while the crowd hangs heavy" and got wedding scenery in my head.


End file.
